Geographical centre

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In geography, the centroid of the two-dimensional shape of a region of the Earth's surface (projected radially to sea level or onto a geoid surface) is often known as its geographical centre. There has long been debate over the methods of calculation of the geographical centres of various countries and regions, such as whether to include offshore islands, and in that case, if the islands should be moved towards the mainland, making it possible to build a connected 2D model of the country and identify the geographical centre as the centre of gravity (equilibrium point) using a needle. An alternative to defining the geographical centre as the centroid is to define it as the point farthest from the boundary of the country (either the sea, or, in the case of constituent countries, a land border), this is similar to the pole of inaccessibility (place furthest from a coastline). These methods give quite different answers.

Notable geographical centres

• Geographical centre of Earth
• Geographical centre of Europe
  • Geographical centre of Austria
  • Geographical centre of Belgium
  • Geographical centre of Ireland
  • Geographical centre of Lithuania
  • Centre of Norway
  • Centre of Poland
  • Geographical centre of Slovenia
  • Geographical center of Sweden
  • Geographical centre of Switzerland
  • Centre points of the United Kingdom
    • Centre of Scotland
    • Centre of Wales
• Geographic center of North America
  • Centre of Canada
  • Geographic centers of the United States and its states
    • Geographic center of the contiguous United States
• Geographical centre of the Russian Federation
  • Geographical centre of the Soviet Union
• Geographical Center of Asia, in China or Russia
  • Geographical centre of India is Barsali ^[1]
• Centre points of Australia
• Geographical centre of New Zealand

See also

• Pole of inaccessibility

References